kempo wrote:Uncle Jack would set aside a gallon of non pasteurized milk every day for his family. If the only milk I could drink was non pasteurized I wouldn't drink it. It tasted like crap. I don't know, maybe you have to develope a taste for it.

Yes it is awful. Had an uncle too in dairy - he was the guy who went around testing all the cows and milk. Even pasteurized non homogenized milk is disgusting. It separates out and you get a mouth full of the "cream" that float to the top. Gross beyond words.

OMG!I grew up on raw milk.We had a brown swiss cow once, and her milk was absolutely delicious!I had top cream and sugar on my pancakes--yum!Holstein milk is lower fat and tastes a bit watery.We had fresh milk when we visited Ukraine, but the cows were grazing on whatever--including a lot of weeds--and you could tell it.The cows would walk home on their own at dusk--it was so charming.

Sleep2Die4 wrote:Regarding the discussion that started this thread I was pleasantly surprised to see Walter Williams revisiting this subject today and even repeating his "grocer trade deficit" example! You might want to look at Walter's column because it sheds a lot of light on several of the subjects discussed in this thread - http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williamns030712.php3

Another case of using a truism to deflect a criticism that doesn't accurately reflect a cause and effect relationship.

Manufacturing productivity has doubled since 1987, and manufacturing output has risen by one-half. However, over the past two decades, manufacturing employment has fallen about 25 percent. For some people, that means our manufacturing sector is sick.

The bottom line is that the health of an industry is measured by its output, not by the number of people it employs.

On their face the above two quotes are correct. The problem lies in how output is gauged. The graphs Nightmonkey and I posted earlier show manufacturing output in gross dollar value of shipments. But, and it's a big but, how much of that output reflects the value of goods purchased from overseas and incorporated into the final shipped product? According to this chart http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2010/0814/20100814_105542_Carsbypercent1.pdf linked from here http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_15775230 the domestic content is as low as 50% for the Ford Explorer/Lincoln Navigator. So if a $50,000 vehicle has 50% foreign content it shows up as contributing $50,000 to American manufacturing output when in reality it's only contributing $25,000!

Another quote from Walter that is problematic.

Suppose Sony doesn't buy any wheat, corn, cotton or cars from Americans. People are tempted to say that there's a trade deficit. Not true. Instead of using that $1,000 to buy goods from us, Sony might purchase stocks and U.S. Treasury bonds from us — in other words, invest in America.

What does invest mean? It means gaining ownership in the form of stocks, or gaining lender's power in the form of bonds. If you have no problem with the possibility that China may eventually own US Steel, Home Depot, Ford, John Deere, Caterpillar, Krogers, Consolidated Coal, and who knows who all, then I suppose buying their products in exchange for ownership of our assets is OK. And if you are not concerned that someday China may own $50 trillion worth of US Government bonds, and thus have a hammer over our entire economy and tax structure, then I suppose it's OK. But I don't like either one of those potential outcomes.

Well, uh, someone has to draw a paycheck?? Why do we need a division of agriculture in the middle of Chicago. Oh, yes, I know the answer. It is incredibly difficult to grow corn on sidewalks. Somebody has to solve that problem!!!

Sleep2Die4 wrote:So everyone understands that raw milk doesn't taste good, "is gross", and is inherently more dangerous than pasteurized milk and no one will drink raw milk? Then why do we need a government staff to regulate raw milk?

Respondents report “that the national education curriculum is not producing workers with the basic skills they need – a trend not likely to improve in the near term.” Skills in need not only include process automation, but also problem-solving abilities.

Have you tried getting a problem with your car, or tv, or computer, figured out lately? Technicians today are parts replacers, not troubleshooters. One reason for that is the education process where kids in elementary grades are allowed to use computers and calculators to do their class work. Kids today are not being adequately taught to look at a problem, take it apart, and come up with a solution using deductive reasoning. The prevailing attitude, and instructional approach, all the way through college, is give me a formula that I can plug in some numbers and have the answer pop out.

There is another contributing factor to the shortage of workers and that is corporate attitude toward blue collar workers in years past. One has been the unrelenting push to move jobs to areas of lower wages. Another has been the attitude of corporate leaders that only college degreed workers were smart enough to lead production teams. I saw that at Corning Glass Works in PA when I worked there as an engineer in 1974-75. Line shift foreman positions were being offered only to college grads, not production workers. One night one such foreman was told that his production line was producing all fine glass. "Thank you," he said. He wasn't enough informed enough to realize that the term "fine glass" referred to glass where glass was squeezed out between the mold and plunger while being formed, and therefore was cull, or scrap.

There's plenty of responsibility to pass around for the skilled worker crunch. It's not all the workers' fault. This problem has been forming slowly for decades. It won't be solved overnight.

I don't give our government credit for much but they are not that dumb. If you will look into the statistics for manufacturing you will see they use value added. I personally know some manufacturers that are importing part of their product line and performing a final step of manufacturing in their U.S. plants. The imported products cost upwards of $15/lb. and the cost of the final step is around $1. When the government compiles data only the $1 value added is counted as U.S. output.

Thanks for that clarification. I'll admit I did not go back to the FRED web site to see if that is made clear. I did not see such an explanation the other day.

idamtnboy, You have a mindset that is hard to change...................So my mindset is also hard to change. I believe manufacturing is stronger than it has ever been in the U.S. and opportunities are greater than they have ever been. I don't travel to Idaho so maybe it is different there and you need to do some traveling to see what is going on in the U.S.

As we get older, and observe and experience more, we do often tend to get more solidified in our viewpoints. I have observed for 40+ years the increasing disparagement of the value and skill of blue collar workers. I have observed the incompetence of private contractors while overseeing their work. I have observed the bashing of government workers by Republican leadership while working for Uncle. I experienced a loss of 1/3 of my home value when I converted the construction loan to a mortgage, a loss resulting from the rampant financial market abuse by free marketers during the past Republican administration. I observed disregard for fiduciary responsibility by free market mutual fund dealers while I was briefly engaged in insurance and securities sales.

Yes my mindset will be hard to change, but it can be, and has been, changed by solid rational arguments.

We can blame corporate and we can blame unions. We can blame republicans and we can blame democrates. But, the fact of the matter is, until we get this http://www.usdebtclock.org/# under control, I see nothing but bad times ahead of us. This nations debt is unsustainable.

Agreed. What bothers me are the economists and political pundits who say the trade imbalance is not a problem because the money comes back as "investments." There's only two ways to accept someone else's money as an investment - you either sell your soul to them, or you mortgage your soul to them. When you sell or mortgage a large enough portion, they can call the shots. You become a slave to them.